{"id":91891,"date":"2015-11-12T14:00:53","date_gmt":"2015-11-12T19:00:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=91891"},"modified":"2015-11-12T13:16:53","modified_gmt":"2015-11-12T18:16:53","slug":"a-new-secret","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/11\/12\/a-new-secret\/","title":{"rendered":"A New Secret"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

John Singer Sargent, The Birthday Party<\/i>, 1887.<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s weird,\u201d my brother, Charlie, said. \u201cLately a lot of my friends have been talking about learning things about their parents.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou mean, secrets?\u201d said my mother. It was her birthday; we were having lunch.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cNo, just facts they happened to not know from their pasts\u2014like, someone\u2019s mom had been a teacher and someone else\u2019s wanted to be a dancer, that kind of thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOr maybe someone\u2019s dad was in a Cub Scout troop with Richard Carpenter,\u201d I contributed. \u201cI\u2019ve heard people say that kind of thing, too.\u201d<\/p>\n

My mom was wearing the cape a friend of Charlie\u2019s had made and the Fitbit I\u2019d just given her.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd I realized,\u201d continued Charlie, \u201cthat there was nothing we don\u2019t know about you\u00a0<\/em>\u2026 \u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s not true,\u201d my dad said. \u201cThere are lots of things you don\u2019t know about me.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cDoubtful,\u201d said Charlie.<\/p>\n

\u201cWell,\u201d said my dad. \u201cHave I ever told you about Jimmy Berg?\u201d<\/p>\n

There was a silence.<\/p>\n

\u201cMaybe not,\u201d said Charlie.<\/p>\n

\u201cWho\u2019s Jimmy Berg?\u201d I said.<\/p>\n

\u201cJimmy Berg was a kid in my first-grade class who used to play by himself in the sandbox during recess,\u201d said my dad. \u201cYou didn\u2019t know that, did you?\u201d<\/p>\n

And we had to admit, we had not. The man still had secrets.<\/p>\n

I rose to bring out a cake, one with only a single candle, for discretion and space\u2019s sake.<\/p>\n

Sadie Stein is contributing editor of <\/em>The Paris Review, and the <\/em>Daily\u2019s correspondent.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cIt\u2019s weird,\u201d my brother, Charlie, said. \u201cLately a lot of my friends have been talking about learning things about their parents.\u201d \u201cYou mean, secrets?\u201d said my mother. It was her birthday; we were having lunch.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":178,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13115],"tags":[8769,9158,8892,1983,8226,20190,450,7215],"class_list":["post-91891","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-our-daily-correspondent","tag-aging","tag-birthdays","tag-childhood","tag-conversation","tag-family","tag-jimmy-berg","tag-parties","tag-secrets"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nI Thought My Dad Had No More Secrets to Tell, But...<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"November 12, 2015 \u2013 \u201cIt\u2019s weird,\u201d my brother, Charlie, said. \u201cLately a lot of my friends have been talking about learning things about their parents.\u201d\u201cYou mean, secrets?\u201d\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, 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